Tech Support Scams Are Constantly Adapting

Tech support scammers are always working to create the next great financial windfall for themselves. These scams can arrive on your screen as fake popups from Apple, Paypal, Microsoft, your Internet Service Provider, basically anything that the scammers think you’ll find believable.

In an effort to educate our readers on the variety of ways tech support scams might appear on their screens, we’re providing a series of screenshots illustrating some of the different scams.

We’ll start with a couple of examples of Apple specific scams. This one even sort of has the Apple logo.

On this one the Apple logo is a little less accurate, a little too elongated to be believable.

This is a scam targeting Macs, but using McAfee Security’s name to get you to believe you have a “Major Security Glitch”. Seriously a “Security Glitch”? We’ll just assume this one isn’t domestic as their is a certain lack of grammar, or as my English Professor would have called a sentence fragment, “Your browser may be redirected as an anonymous activity has found.” Hmm “an anonymous activity has found” oh yeah that sounds totally legit.

Now let’s take a look at some scams that Microsoft specific or intent on using the reputation of Microsoft to legitimize themselves. This first one preys on people’s misunderstandings of the new subscription software services. While Microsoft is looking at going to a subscription for your Windows, for the time being you purchased your Windows (7, 8, 8.1, 10, etc) when you purchased your computer and the product key does not expire.

This is an example of your standard, “I’m a Microsoft tech and I need to access your computer to fix (problems I’m going to invent).”

Another image of the fake Microsoft tech.

Yet another version of the scam, this one includes Norton and Norton’s logo to help convince the victim that this is indeed a real infection.

Next we move on to the scams we that use your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to convince you they are legitimate. We’ll start with AT&T.

Time Warner

Verizon

Now you have samples of some of the more frequently seen tech support scam popups. If you have questions or see something popup on your computer that leaves you concerned give Top Speed Computer Service a call! 775.852.4333